News - Firefox 9 released, speeds up browser by up to 30%

[watercooled]

and for some reason the memory usage ballooned with only a few tabs up.

Yeah that's something I don't like about it, I hadn't seen a low memory warning with 4GB installed before I installed Chrome!

My argument is also pointing out that it's a browser, for browsing the net, have we not got to a feature saturation point? I'd rather they just improve what's there already.

That's what minor releases are for.

Doesn't the quicker release mean they can react to changes better and improve it faster, the code's already solid.

It has nothing to do with speed of improvements, but with the old model they would only release improvements/bug fixes, strictly no new features. As I said new features introduce instability in the code and it doesn't take a big change to introduce a massive security flaw. A browser is more than just another application for most people now, it's probably the most used application type and as such it's nearing the importance of an OS so you want it to be taken seriously.

I agree, they would be more suited to using 4.0.0, 4.1.0, etc based on the limited changes between the recent releases.

[dave87]

Ah, but isn't the jump from Firefox 3.xx to 8 and 9 because IE and Chrome have higher version numbers? And as everyone knows, the higher the number the better the product

[dave87]

Just installed v9 on my laptop, and the first page it has shown me tells me that my install of Firefox is out of date and I should download 8.0.1.


Ooops.

[watercooled]

It's confused because there isn't a version to upgrade to, they didn't plan for that while programming the updater.

[Scribe]

Fair enough, that's your view of it. I've just come back to ff from chrome with my tail between my legs, I just didn't get on with it, and for some reason the memory usage ballooned with only a few tabs up.
My argument is also pointing out that it's a browser, for browsing the net, have we not got to a feature saturation point? I'd rather they just improve what's there already.
Doesn't the quicker release mean they can react to changes better and improve it faster, the code's already solid.

brasc

Chrome is a bit memory hungry, it's a trade-off between speed and also sand-boxing each tab, which requires more redundant resources but allows for one tab to crash without taking down the others and for various security benefits.

[Phage]

FF8 broke Battlelog, Gmail attachments and seemed fairly slow. Iron and IE work but I miss the features of FF.
Hmmm, what's opera like ?

[CampGareth]

"thanks to a bit of detective work from Lifehacker, the pubic download links have been discovered."

Typo, amusing one too. Could you get a virus from a pubic download link? ;P

[sweey]

lol is it really that much of a problem!? It's less than 2 mins to update it, and for a better experience that surely can't hurt.

brasc

I've had some profile corruption issues relating to Google cookies which would randomly expire themselves even if I reset all cookie behaviour and delete cookies or even delete the cookies file in the profile folder.

I've had to keep restoring a bare profile and using it until the issue occurs again. I haven't been able to isolate anything specific except that the problem started with version 7 and it isn't add-on related.

:<

[Mattus]

Christ on a bike - they're just numbers! So fed up with people moaning about the Firefox rapid release scheme. What difference does it make whether it's called version 9 or version 4.9? The idea is to release more often and to get new features in the users' hands more quickly. Is an update every six weeks really that intolerable?

And if you think 3.6 is superior to the latest versions, you're pretty misguided. JavaScript performance is many times faster in the latest versions, as is load time, CSS and DOM performance, etc. Plus there's hardware acceleration, which makes a massive difference.

[TaintedShirt]

Firefox still with the memory usage and this after I left it overnight.

[watercooled]

C***** on a bike - they're just numbers! So fed up with people moaning about the Firefox rapid release scheme. What difference does it make whether it's called version 9 or version 4.9? The idea is to release more often and to get new features in the users' hands more quickly. Is an update every six weeks really that intolerable?

And if you think 3.6 is superior to the latest versions, you're pretty misguided. JavaScript performance is many times faster in the latest versions, as is load time, CSS and DOM performance, etc. Plus there's hardware acceleration, which makes a massive difference.

Go back and read what I've posted again and again and you'll see what the problem is. It may appear as 'just a number' to an end user, but it means so much more to developers. And no, I've used said versions and I know which is faster, not just looking at the specs.
JS performance maybe something which gains importance in the future or on a few rare web apps, but based on my web usage it really isn't a compelling reason to switch.

Firefox still with the memory usage and this after I left it overnight.

I have ~400MB usage with >80 tabs open on 3.6 after being open for a day or two!

[Mattus]

Go back and read what I've posted again and again and you'll see what the problem is. It may appear as 'just a number' to an end user, but it means so much more to developers.

You can't see that the market has fundamentally changed.

Versions prior to 4 were released on roughly a yearly basis. with only bugfixes in between. That was fine when the only competition was IE, and Microsoft wasn't investing a lot of energy in developing it. Now Google is getting new features into the hands of Chrome users every six weeks or so. With the pace at which fast Javascript, HTML5 and related specifications are developing and being implemented at present, there's no way it's feasible any more to wait an entire year between feature releases. Your competitors can steal a hell of a march on you in a year!

You also make it sound like the new, faster release cycle essentially involves throwing a lot of mud at the wall without really testing it properly, and seeing what sticks. That's clearly not the case, as anything which makes it to a final build has been pulled out of trunk builds and has gone through a six-week 'Aurora' phase followed by a six-week 'Beta' phase. Only then is a feature eligible for release, and if it isn't considered stable enough at any of the above points, it will be kept back until it is. The Firefox testing community is very active, and things aren't nearly as haphazard as you're making out. Plus they tend to err on the side of caution a lot when determining if something is ready to ship.

IMO the faster release cycle is fundamentally a good idea. What's holding Firefox back at the moment is that the upgrade process isn't nearly as seamless as it needs to be when updates occur that frequently. They need to make updates much less intrusive and introduce a more robust way of maintaining add-on compatibility across versions - both of which are in the pipeline. Those changes will fix a lot of the complaints people rightly have about the rapid releases. After all, Chrome updates much more regularly than Fx, and you rarely see any complaints - because the update process is so streamlined.

[this_is_gav]

I don't know what's going on with the memory. I don't think I've ever personally seen the much-reported leak - it's been relatively constant after it's been on.

I switched my PC on early this morning with Firefox (now v9) open, didn't really use it until this afternoon, have been on the internet since about 4pm, had at least 10 tabs open in 2 windows all day (session restored from yesterday), and it's still under 500mb RAM usage, which is what it usually is.

Perhaps it's a certain addon?

[miniyazz]

I've tried with no addons and still had the problem. It's not the memory leak I care about though, I have 8gb ram for no real reason so it may as well get used. It's the lag where it maxes out a core and temporarily freezes for <1s that occurs as the memory leak increases that bugs me. This happens every few seconds and is especially a pain when watching a video clip in-browser.

[this_is_gav]

I used to get the browser freezing (normally when adding a tab), but can't say I've had it when just reading a page or watching a video. That freezing went away with an update (from v6 to v7 or v7 to v8) and I've not seen it since. The only crashes I've seen since has been Flash crashing occasionally.

[Jace007]

Stopped using this laggy software ages ago, the old version 3.2+ all pretty much sucked.
I might give this ago if it says its really 'improved' and not bloated.